


Anecdotes from the Unknown

by Antimatter_Asterism



Category: Gravity Falls, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Bill and the Beast begone, Dipper and Mabel are here too!, Eventual Pinescone, HELL YEA, He probably still recites poetry, Hurt/Comfort, I ... WILL find a way to incorporate Greg, I'll add more tags as they appear- let me know if I missed anything that should be tagged, I'm sorry- these tags are dumb as shit, Just you wait - Freeform, Lantern bearer Wirt meets Beast Wirt?, M/M, No shipping demons and children here though, Only more Edgar Allen Poe and less Yeats and Robert Frost, Slow Burn, This ain't your fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 09:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14133663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antimatter_Asterism/pseuds/Antimatter_Asterism
Summary: If you come here for answers, you will find none.If you come in search of a warm story filled with wonder and coated in honey, you’ll find those hopes sorely undone.If you come seeking the end of a ghastly creature’s reign,And a forgotten brother’s woes,Discovered by one with less brawn, rather brain.Then I’d wager what you search for, is indeed very close.Welcome to the shadows!Welcome to the throes!Welcome,To the anecdotes from the Unknown.(Or, that one pretentious one wherein Dipper and Mabel enter the Unknown only to encounter not the Beast, but our friendly neighborhood Wirt instead.)





	Anecdotes from the Unknown

To say that Wirt was someone with an infallible amount of luck is a sore conjecture, and you’d soon find yourself painfully mistaken upon making that assumption. In fact, most would call him unlucky. His brother, Gregory, had pluck and optimism in spades, if often unrealistic. Whereas Wirt was pragmatic, albeit pessimistic in nature. Often did he whisper poetic verses laced in melancholy beneath his breath, as Greg sung cheerful melodies about frogs and bluebirds. Greg spun tales of whimsy with each verse, and Wirt mumbled darkened poems of dismal subjects. 

Though, that is to be expected, given that Greg was a small child, young enough that even darkness could be disguised as light. And Wirt was old enough to foolishly believe he was intimate with each shadow. They were both incorrect, in their own ways. That was how the Beast got them in the first place. You could sit here all day, hearing of how these two brothers found themselves locked in the Edelwood’s bitter caress. However, at this point it does not matter. The past is not malleable, not quite like the future is. There’s no sense speaking in somber tones of the past, not when the ending has yet to come. 

When Wirt and Greg found themselves in the Beast’s clutches, condemned to the monster of somber hymns and wooden skin… they were left with little choice. Wirt had found his brother entrapped in the fatal Edelwood, and the Beast loomed near. A deal was struck, but not the one you may be familiar with. 

.  
.

.  
_“That’s dumb,” The teenager had spoken, a sense of incredulous disdain lighting up his voice, the sparks of realization in his eyes, “I’m not going to wander around these woods for the rest of my life,” he’d spoken, spitting those words out, they sounded final, powerful. Even so, he could hear his heart pounding in his chest, his lungs seizing up in fear._

__

_“I’m trying to help you,” Snarled the Beast, his voice warbled, deep and dark. It sounded like a misshapen, ugly parody of comfort._

__

_“Then we better strike a different deal,” And with those uttered words, the pilgrim’s fate was sealed._  
.  
.

__

.

He’d traded himself for his brother that day, Greg had woken up, Greg had made it out of the throes of the Unknown. Nobody found Wirt, but he’d had a feeling that wherever he was now… he wouldn’t be able to go back, not truly. Wirt had tricked the Beast into letting his brother go, and then he’d blown out the lantern. It had been a mistake, as he’d learn later. he’d inhaled ashes. They swirled in his lungs, burned his throat. The dark bits of dust like despair filled his lungs, churned in his throat, leaving burnt flesh in their wake. He’d doubled over, body fighting the offending substance, as he hacked violent expulsions of air. Tears of pain welled up in his eyes, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.  


The ash grew to something more toxic, they turned to branches made of Edelwood, coiling throughout the lantern bearers body, protruding in familiar antlers out of his head. It discolored his eyes, and his voice had grown more raspy. His skin grew pallid as he became a creature of darkness, draped in the inky blackness of the Beast’s woods. The woodsman was gone. Lorna’s tale ended happily, she spent her days sipping tea with Auntie Whispers. Adelaide turned to smoke upon contact with fresh air. Beatrice, trapped and bound by her bluebird wings, cursed her family to the same fate, she still visited. She’d perch on his antlers, or his shoulder, cloaked by a navy fabric. He was bound to the Unknown now, bound to the lantern. Burning Edelwood in that cursed lantern. Though, calling Wirt by the name of the Beast would not be a succinct, or apt title. He guided lost souls, woebegone adults trapped, losing hope quickly upon the fog and twisting trees. He guided wayward spirits, baby-faced children with honeyed voices, ones with eyes so bright they made his heart twist painfully. 

Wirt didn’t like the Unknown. In fact, he loathed it. He hated it when he came across a new Edelwood tree, even though he needed them to survive. Yet, he’d do anything to prevent another from taking hold of the ground. He’d know not what became of his brother’s life, and oh, how he’d yearn for the ability to talk to Greg one last time. To apologize, he’d been so horrendous to his brother. Blaming him for every misstep, even ones made by Wirt’s own feet. He wishes that he’d given Greg better memories of himself. 

It was all Wirt’s fault, none of it was Greg’s. And so, suffocated by the scent of ash and oil, and the bitter self-hate, the shame, did the lantern-bearer trek forward in foggy woods, where there was naught but gloom and hopelessness. His lantern with its pale, alabaster glow, a beacon of fear, the kind that churns in your gut, and steal your voice right off your tongue. The kind of fear that feels sickly, like a fever. Churning, warm in your gut, and then cold as ice through your veins, giving your skin a pallid tone. Then, the kind of precarious hope, barely held together by fraying strings. The one that is as comforting as a mother’s lullaby, but as fleeting as a tuft of milkweed on a spring breeze. 

He isn’t sure if the tale of the Beast still spreads through the whispers and rumors in the Tavern. He isn’t sure if he’s the Beast now, but he likes to think he’s something different now, something better. More benign. He feels his skin growing sunken in his face, the color on his clothes losing saturation, the sticky black tears that drip down his face from his unnatural eyes. He wonders, sometimes, if Greg would fear him for what he was now. He dismisses that train of thought and sorrowful woe. 

And thus was the miserable existence of an ill-fated pilgrim.  
But, when a boy toting a hat with a pine tree emblem, and a girl with a penchant for colorful clothing enter the Unknown, things are bound to get far more interesting.  
Perhaps this despondent wayward being’s fate would change.  
Perhaps it wouldn’t.  
Nobody can say for sure, not yet. 

However, the events that would unfold make for a very good story indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Haha, alright- that's a wrap for now. The prelude is admittedly short, but that's simply because it's more of a hook than anything else. Chapters are always longer. I'll try to update at least a chapter a week, depending on my mood and self-restraint. Comments make my day, as they do most authors on here. They water my crops and clean my skin, yadda yadda. I hoped you enjoyed, anywho! I do plan for this one to be a long one with a semi-consistent schedule.
> 
> Oh yeah, this is also my first fanfic on Ao3! So that's pretty neat, I suppose.
> 
> Good day to you all!


End file.
